1971 was a great year in my life for several reasons. My daughter was born, I was master of my domain, times were easy, rents were low, jobs were plentiful, and my favorite movie of all time hit the screen. A girl who lived below us saw it and couldn't wait to tell me this was a must see film. So I did. Then I saw it again. And again. And again. I have no idea how many times i've watched it. I own it, of course. Harold and Maude. A brilliant black comedy, Zen meditation, satire and life affirming wonder all rolled into one.
Directed by Hal Ashby, who was also responsible for Coming Home and Being There, among others, and starring Ruth Gordon and Bud Cort. More on them later. I'll give a brief synopsis of the film here, but nothing short of viewing it can really do it justice. It's one of the few films I feel really can't be described well enough, it simply has to seen.
It's about a 19 year old, Harold Chasen (Bud Cort), growing up with his facile and self-involved mother in a mansion in the San Francisco Bay Area. He creates elaborate fake suicides in a desperate bid for his mothers attention, and to shock her. The film opens with him staging a hanging in a room he knows she'll soon enter. She takes no notice, she's seen it all before, and Harold is once again disappointed.
She gives him a Jaguar for his birthday, and he promptly converts it into a classy hearse. Harold has a morbid curiousity about death. He drives the hearse to the funeral of someone he doesn't know, as he likes to do on occasion, and there he meets Maude, a septagenarian free spirit who also likes funerals. She offers him some licorish and introduces herself to a reluctant Harold. The film still above is of their first meeting.
From there Harold goes from being embarrassed and put off by Maudes carefree attitude to falling madly in love with her, completely misunderstanding her live-in-the-moment and to the fullest existance. He only knows that she's everything he's never experienced before and he wants to with her always. She ends up teaching him how to live and freeing him from the prison he's made of his life. The ending is brilliant.
In between are many comedically brilliant scenes from one of the all time great actresses and an up and coming actor, Bud Cort, whom I feel never did realize his full potential. Ruth Gordon Jones (October 30, 1896 – August 28, 1985) lived a full and magnificent life. She began as an extra in silent films, made her way to Broadway, and then back to film. She won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Rosemary's Baby. She went on to appear in twenty-two more films and at least that many television appearances through her seventies and eighties, including such successful sitcoms as Rhoda (which earned her another Emmy nomination) and Newhart. She also guest-starred on the late episode Columbo: Try and Catch Me. She made countless talk show appearances, in addition to hosting Saturday Night Live in 1977.
Bud Cort was discovered in a revue by director Robert Altman, who subsequently cast him in two of his movies, MASH and Brewster McCloud (in which he played the title role). His success in those films led to the starring role in Harold and Maude. On Broadway, Cort appeared in the short-lived 1972 play Wise Child by Simon Gray. Cort was invited to live with the famous comedian Groucho Marx in his Bel Air mansion, and was present at Marx's death in 1977.
In 1979, Bud’s life nearly ended in a car accident on the Hollywood Freeway. From behind, he collided with an abandoned car blocking a lane into which he was turning. Years of plastic surgery, enormous hospital bills, a losing court case, and the disruption of his career ensued. Since, Cort has appeared in various film, stage and TV roles, but his career never really rose to it's potential. At least not in my opinion.
I hope if you've never seen Harold and Maude that you'll rent it. The film is number 45 on the American Film Institute's list of 100 Funniest Movies of all time, number 69 in its list for most romantic, and number 42 on Bravo's 100 Funniest Movies. In 1997, it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
